The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II

By Peter Eisner

Compared to Casablanca by the Washington Post, The Freedom Line is a page-turning story of a group of resistance workers who secreted downed Allied fighter pilots through France and into safety in Spain during World War II—perfect for fans of Apple TV's Masters of the Air.

As war raged against Hitler's Germany, an increasing number of Allied fliers were shot down on missions against Nazi targets in occupied Europe. Many fliers parachuted safely behind enemy lines only to find themselves stranded and hunted down by the Gestapo. The Freedom Line traces the thrilling and true story of Robert Grimes, a 20–year–old American B–17 pilot whose plane was shot down over Belgium on Oct. 20, 1943. Wounded, disoriented, and scared, he was rescued by operatives of the Comet Line, a group of tenacious young women and men from Belgium, France, and Spain who joined forces to rescue the Allied aircrews and take them to safety. And on Christmas Eve 1943, he and a group of fellow Americans faced unexpected sudden danger and tragedy on the border between France and Spain.

The road to safety was a treacherous journey by train, by bicycle, and on foot that stretched hundreds of miles across occupied France to the Pyrenees Mountains at the Spanish border. Armed with guile and spirit, the selfless civilian fighters of the Comet Line had risked their lives to create this underground railroad, and by this time in the war, they had saved hundreds of Americans, British, Australians, and other Allied airmen.

Based on interviews with the survivors and in–depth archival research, The Freedom Line is the story of a group of friends who chose to act on their own out of a deep respect for liberty and human dignity. Theirs was a courage that presumed to take on a fearfully powerful foe with few defences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780062295552

Peter Eisner

Peter Eisner has been an editor and reporter at the Washington Post, Newsday, and the Associated Press. His books include the award-winning The Freedom Line and The Italian Letter, which he wrote with Knut Royce. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Book preview

PART ONE

January 1943

CHAPTER ONE

Stopped at the Border

Dédée. Urrugne, France. January 14, 1943.

Freezing rain crackled on the tile roof of the farmhouse in the French-Basque village, just a few miles from the Spanish border. There were six of them: three disoriented British airmen; Dédée, the Belgian woman who led the Comet escape line; Florentino, their Basque guide; and Frantxia, who owned the little whitewashed homestead some yards from the dirt road. They had been waiting all afternoon for the weather to improve, but night descended; and the rain kept coming down. The wind rattled the windowpanes, and the gray fog was dissolving into night.

Dédée had led the airmen on the express train down from Paris to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a Basque fishing village. They’d walked two hours to Frantxia’s house in a heavy rainstorm. It had not stopped raining. The airmen were depending on Dédée as their lifeline to get back to England. She was small and slender, and very attractive. She marched with a determined gait as she coaxed them along the sodden paths, and she was also the only one of their guides who spoke English. Dédée looked at them with a penetrating, piercing gaze.

You must be ready to move quickly at any time, without question.

We will tell you when it is safe to go.

Almost always, the escape plan was to follow the hilly goat trails that led through the mountains to the Bidassoa River, the dividing line between France and Spain, not four miles away. These were the old byways known only to the Basque shepherds and the smugglers who packed all forms of contraband over the Pyrenees back and forth across the border. The men coming across told them the Bidassoa River was a flooded torrent. It was too dangerous to cross the river, which meant that the only way to Spain involved a five-hour detour and a risky crossing on a low suspension bridge. That road would be illuminated and was watched by German and Spanish patrols.

Dédée tried to hide her distress, but her furrowed brow was bathed in the flickering light. She’d decided to leave her father at another safe house back along the seacoast and now she feared for his life. The plan had been to bring him here and then cross over to Spain. But he was fifty-eight years old and she didn’t think he’d be able to manage under these conditions. She’d kissed him good-bye, promising to come back and fetch him when the weather opened up.

Dédée had misgivings and was feeling more responsibilities than ever. She had finally convinced her father that he could no longer stay in Paris, because the Nazis were on his trail; it was time for him to escape to England. There had been two close calls in the last year, and many of their friends were arrested. It was only a matter of time before the Gestapo would track him down. Reluctantly, he’d agreed to go with her on the next mission south to Spain, as they smuggled another group of airmen to safety.

Florentino, a huge, chisel-faced sort from the mountains, glowered and said nothing, pacing the length of the floor. He knew the mountains; he warned Dédée against chancing the trip when it was raining and the river was high. When the relentless winter rain muddied the dirt paths, the passage was perilous even for him. They would have to crawl in the muck over rocks and boulders, hugging the paths that wound up the hills with barely enough room for a man to avoid sliding off the edge of a cliff. There might even be ice in the higher elevations. The rocks were slippery enough even without ice; legs would be broken, and he was the one who would end up carrying out the injured person on his back. Last year, one of the women guides did break her leg when she slipped and fell in weather not even as bad as this. Florentino carried her for a while, and then fetched a mule and took her to a safe house, where a doctor set the fracture. They were lucky that night to have been on the Spanish side: the Gestapo didn’t cross the border on patrol, although the Spanish guards were almost as dangerous.

There were sudden gusts and the raindrops slashed at the windows. The wind had blown the door open a while earlier and gave them a fright. Now, one of the dogs was barking.

Donato is here, said one of Frantxia’s three little boys, running in from the storm.

Donato was a farmhand who once worked at this house and was now with a neighbor down the road. He came to the door, peering inside at Florentino and the pilots. Several months ago, Donato had come along with them as a guide over the mountains, but Dédée hadn’t trusted him and never asked him along after that. Donato was speaking with Frantxia, in Euskera, the Basque language. Dédée didn’t understand a word, but she saw greed in his smile and betrayal in his darting eyes. Perhaps he held a grudge because she’d chosen Florentino and not him as their guide. Donato left and the dog quieted down.

In the dark, everything was uncertain. It was too risky to move the pilots back to town. They could speak neither French nor Euskera nor Spanish. Even disguised in local dress, they would be found out. They were trapped.

I will stay here with them, she told Florentino. You can wait for us at Kattalin’s house.

Kattalin, the widow, lived in the village by the sea where Dédée and her group hid Allied airmen after guiding them south. She had a little house on a cobblestone street that dipped down toward the bay. It was just off the main highway, a few miles north of Spain. But the highway was not an option for them because it was far too busy with Nazi checkpoints and patrols. The escape to Spain took a circuitous course across the road and up along the farm paths, stopping at Frantxia’s, the final safe house before the overnight walk to freedom.

Dédée and Florentino may in fact have dozed. But they were alert to the sounds in the night. Before dawn, Florentino bundled up against the weather and walked out down the path to the sea. The rain had stopped, but the river was likely to remain flooded for several days as flowing streams merged into torrents that rushed from the mountains. Frantxia sent her three children off to school.

The British pilots stayed in the bedroom upstairs, talking quietly and waiting for the word from Dédée to move on. Frantxia brought them coffee. Later, there was hot milk and broth, cheese and black bread. They were in good spirits, because they expected to be going home soon. They were huddled in the soft smell of wood and musty heat, telling stories and sharing half a cigarette when they heard a noise. One of them jumped up and yelled in mock rage, Here comes the Gestapo! and the others laughed. But Dédée had already looked out the window and saw the soldiers in their gray uniforms.

Ten German troops barged in, came up the stairs and, using their rifles, pushed the three fliers out into the shiveringly cold yard. The soldiers pinned the three men against the wall and searched them for weapons.

Saboteurs! one of the Germans said harshly. Saboteurs are to be killed.

Wait, said a pilot, showing the Germans his dog tags, we’re in the RAF—we’re in the RAF.

The Germans eased off and the Brits showed a bit of bravado.

They weren’t going to kill us, I think it was a bluff to frighten us, said one of the Brits.

The others weren’t so sure.

The soldiers were equally harsh with Dédée and Frantxia, forcing them to stand in the cold as they checked the stables and all around the house. Three escaping airmen along with two women accomplices was a good catch, but the Germans were not satisfied. The soldiers scoured the house and the hedges and the stables until their commander strode before his prisoners.

Where is the other one? the Nazi demanded, menacing as he looked at each of them. You will talk, my friends. You will talk. Dédée realized they were expecting to find Florentino as well. She’d been right about Donato. Only Donato knew how many people were in the house.

The patrol marched Dédée, Frantxia and the three airmen for two hours, hands over their heads, down the farm road back down toward the town. The rain picked up again and dissolved the translucent layer of early morning frost. Dédée was still dressed for the mountains in a pair of loose blue slacks and light shoes, now covered with congealed mud; her hair was soaked with rain. The soldiers led them up to the main highway, away from the Spanish border. They continued single file in a sad procession, passing cottages along the way where their friends could be hiding but were unlikely to peer out at a Gestapo patrol. They approached the little bridge across the inlet that led into Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Dédée, looking for any means of escape, considered hurling herself off the bridge where she might swim and possibly jump to shore before the Germans had a clear shot at her. Any thought of that was lost when she looked down; the rocks were showing at low tide.

Few people were out in the early morning. An occasional horse cart trudged along carrying food or farm goods. Here and there a car swept by, probably confiscated and being used by the Germans. Trucks were grinding their gears up the hill as they rounded the curve in view of the seacoast, and then up to Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The trucks were returning from Spain with food and war imports purchased for the Reich. People from the village pedaled their bikes in the rain, having no other choice but to go to work or to do their shopping in the cold and damp. Few eyes lingered on the patrol leading their prisoners.

It was still morning when Dédée, Frantxia and the three pilots were shoved into the gendarmerie in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Dédée realized that her father and friends would soon find out about her capture. She hoped her father would not turn himself in.

The Germans conducted a perfunctory interrogation at the little jailhouse. They separated the women from the men, and there was no rough treatment, at least not yet.

Name? a policeman asked.

She gave a false name.

Nationality?

French.

Dédée admitted nothing, showing forged papers that identified her as a local French girl.

She assumed that these were just low-ranking officials and that the Gestapo interrogators would be summoning her soon. Dédée would analyze the situation and figure out what she could best do to save her father and the others. After that, she’d worry about herself. Perhaps the Germans would not kill them.

By the time of her arrest by the Germans on January 15, 1943, Dédée de Jongh had been running the Comet Line for about a year and a half. She’d first shown up on the doorstep of the British consulate in the Spanish-Basque city of Bilbao in August 1941, leading with her the first two men she’d guided across the Pyrenees to safety. They were British Army privates from the Glasgow Highlanders, Bobby Conville and Allan Cowan, happy to have been plucked to safety from otherwise certain capture by the Germans.

The reception at the British consulate was cool at best. Beyond the obvious concern that the Germans might be sending a shill to set them up, Arthur Dean, the British vice consul, was having trouble believing the twenty-five-year-old woman before him had just traveled 500 miles across France, and trekked all night across the mountains into Spain, evading the Germans. Some members of the British legation were ready to dismiss her plan to save Allied pilots out of hand. British bureaucrats were used to dealing with men. Plus Dédée was too pretty.

But you are a young girl, the vice consul said. You are not going to cross the Pyrenees again?

Dédée was fit and strong and not willing to listen to anything that was patronizing or that would dissuade her. She kept her anger in check.

But yes. I’m as strong as a man. Girls attract less attention in the frontier zone than men.

Dédée had been a volunteer with the Belgian Red Cross, tending to the wounded British and Belgian soldiers at Bruges after the disaster at Dunkirk when the Germans overran Belgian defenses in 1940. When she returned home to Brussels, a passion had been awakened in her.

She and her father, Frédéric, a schoolmaster, agreed that something had to be done. Belgians could not just watch the Germans take over their country. Dédée’s eyes burned as she watched the Wehrmacht tanks roll through the streets of Brussels that May. Belgians met the Nazi occupiers with silence. Beneath the surface, though, underground newspapers began operating, and networks of friends joined to give sanctuary to soldiers who were unable to escape Europe on the flotilla of boats that had crossed the Channel back to England.

Dédée could have chosen an easier life, working anonymously as a nurse in a hospital in Brussels. But she was far too determined to defy Hitler’s Anschluss. As British and then American air sorties stepped up over Europe, Allied planes were being shot down and some aircrews were parachuting to relative safety in the countryside. Those who were not captured often received aid and comfort from townspeople who encountered them, despite how enormously risky it was for them to resist the German onslaught. The problem was that no immediate way was available to help the aircrews other than to feed them, tend to their wounds and send them out to fend for themselves.

At first, the escape routes took them the direct way, by boat across the English Channel. Some airmen did get out across the Channel and Dédée was organizing escapes to the coast. But by 1942, the Germans consolidated control of their occupied territory and Dédée realized the short route across the Channel was too dangerous to organize a regular itinerary. The alternative was to set up an underground railroad moving Allied soldiers across France and into Spain. It would take a large network of friends and confidants, farmers in the countryside, hiding places in the cities. They would help the fliers blend into Europe by creating false identities and shepherding them slowly toward nominally neutral Spain and onward to the British bastion of Gibraltar on the Mediterranean.

To do this, Dédée needed three centers of organization: Brussels, Paris and the French-Spanish border. When it became clear that Brussels was too dangerous for Dédée and her father, the leader became Jean Greindl, alias Nemo, the director of the Swedish Canteen, a relief organization set up by the Red Cross to give aid to the poor and displaced in occupied Belgium. Nemo was ten years older than the others and used his front at the relief organization to gather up equipment for escaping pilots.

Dédée’s father took charge of the Paris operation, working from a series of safe houses. It was not easy; it took money and organization to establish safe houses, transportation links and support services. They needed versatility, discipline and commitment usually attributed to trained intelligence agents. My father and I have agreed that we shall concentrate on bringing through as many trained fighting men as we can, she told the British vice consul. All we need is the money to pay our guides and for feeding and housing the men on the long route from Brussels to Bilbao.

The British were noncommittal; they would discuss the matter.

Come back in two weeks, the vice consul told her. He would check with his colleagues in Madrid. Dédée agreed, bade good-bye to Cowan and Conville, her first two clients, then headed back for the mountains.

Dédée went back to organizing operations on the French side of the border. She’d already made contact with a fellow Belgian named Elvire de Greef—code-named Auntie Go—who with her husband, Frédéric—the Uncle—fled to southern France when the Germans invaded Belgium. They’d taken up residence outside Bayonne—the northern-most city in the Basque country—and were already establishing their own clandestine network.

The Uncle became a translator for the German army, giving him perfect access to spy on the Nazis from within. Together, Auntie Go and the Uncle became adept at manipulating the black market in food and contraband, even obtaining information about German officers for blackmail if it ever became necessary.

They agreed to coordinate the southern sector. Dédée also had met the widow Kattalin. Kattalin was a woman of the Basque country. She was already in her forties—Florentino’s age—and she had a fourteen-year-old daughter, Fifine. Kattalin’s husband, Pierre, had died twelve years earlier, suffering for years from the effects of gas attacks when he was a soldier in the French army fighting the Germans in World War I.

Together, Auntie Go and Kattalin prepared the details for the escape operation. They needed forgers and drivers, cooks and people with bicycles and guides to lead the airmen across the mountains. By the time Dédée crossed the mountains to meet the British once more, the network was taking shape.

The British argued a great deal about what to do after Dédée’s visit; some said it was unbecoming for diplomats to engage in clandestine activity. Others still questioned whether Dédée was a German agent and, in any case, whether she could deliver pilots as promised. Michael Creswell, a young political secretary at the British embassy in Madrid, had no patience for such nonsense. Creswell didn’t like the stuffy bureaucracy of the British embassy. This was not a time for diplomacy, caution or half-measures. It was a war, and he intended to participate. Instinctively, he thought the description of the young woman and her plan sounded right. So he drove up to the Bilbao consulate from Madrid to see for himself.

Creswell was waiting for Dédée when she returned to the consulate. Dédée told him that she wanted independence from government interference and he could relate to that. She sought logistical support and protection from Spanish authorities who routinely imprisoned escapees and their helpers once captured crossing the frontier. Her organization did not expect to be paid, but it did need money for supplies, clothing and food; to organize production of false documents; to pay for bribes, railroad tickets and expenses for the contraband artists who would carry the escapees on the shortest and most demanding part of the passage.

After an extensive interview, it was obvious to Creswell that Dédée was a legitimate, albeit unlikely operative. Her manner was direct and her dark, oval eyes portrayed strength and resolve. It was a compelling, feminine face, with her hair brushed back over the forehead. She had fine eyes and a determined mouth.

With Creswell’s patronage and eventual support of MI9, the military intelligence escape branch in London, Dédée and her newfound friends were moving airmen across the border at a regular pace by the end of 1941. Their tenacity enabled the airmen to return to the field of battle, and the escape lines also provided a source of human intelligence and a mail route for all sorts of Allied intelligence material. By the time of her arrest, she’d crossed the Pyrenees twenty-four times herself, leading at least 118 aviators to safety without losing one.

It was risky business, the work of finding trusted coworkers to shelter fliers and other refugees sought by the Nazis, hide them and organize an inconspicuous way of transporting them out of the country. If caught, the flight crews supposedly would be sent to relatively comfortable POW camps (in fact, many were beaten and forced into work gangs, while some were murdered). But their resistance helpers and anyone related to them faced probable death sentences, or at the very least deportation to concentration camps, where most of them would be killed. Even when they managed to reach Spain, the danger did not pass. The Gestapo had trained Franco’s Guardia Civil, and they were inclined to turn the pilots in to the Nazis.

Dédée brought good news back to her friends in France. The British would help and that would guarantee they could safeguard escaping aircrews once they got to Spain. But once most of the network was in place, they required a special person to complete the missing link in the journey, a tireless and fearless guide who could lead them reliably to Spain. It would have to be a man of the mountains who knew every treacherous path and possible route of escape—and someone who shared their passion to oppose the Nazis. Kattalin, the widow, said she knew such a man.

Florentino. Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France.

January 15, 1943.

Florentino Goikoetxea’s network of friends brought the news to Kattalin’s house that the Nazis had captured Dédée. With all his strength, all his energy, there was simply nothing Florentino could do to save her. If he had self-recriminations about allowing Dédée to stay behind, he never told anyone. But he was devastated by her loss.

When Dédée asked for a mountain guide, Florentino was the one Kattalin had introduced her to—the toughest, bravest, most reliable guide in the Basque country. He was proud of the honor and he had come to respect Dédée’s role in the organization.

Florentino seemed to have tender feelings for Dédée. The other guides and members of Comet noticed how his gruffness softened when she was around. Of all the people that followed him through the mountains, the little woman was the only one who could keep up with him.

But he was not to be deterred by her capture or because the Nazis were after him. In the spirit of their friendship, Florentino and everyone else in the Comet Line focused more than ever on the work at hand. First they had to notify Dédée’s father five miles up the road, and then Florentino had to cross over to Spain to bring word of Dédée’s capture to their British allies. Then it was back to work: more pilots were coming down the line.

Florentino had been hiding from the police for years on both sides of the French-Spanish border and even mocked them, using his guile to come down from the mountains to visit friends in town from time to time. He defied authority because he considered it his birthright to go wherever he pleased. An oversize dark beret sat flat like a pancake atop his head, and a stray black cowlick protruded from the center of the cap, plastered in an irregular line to his forehead. He dressed in peasant’s clothes: a gray sweater, an old black sailor coat of wool and coarse work pants ending high over his shoes. He stood with his left arm akimbo, at once diffident and rebellious, the hint of an inscrutable smile beneath a deep-set brow and a prodigious Basque nose.

Florentino came from a family of farmers on the Spanish side of the Basque country. He was born in 1898, the same year of the war in Cuba. He grew up with stories of veterans fighting the Americans in Cuba, about relatives who decided to stay in that infernal jungle and about others who’d died there.

He and his younger brother, Pedro, were raised in the mountains; but it was Florentino who grew to prodigious size, with the back of an ox and hands that were big fat paws. As a teenager he worked digging sand along the Bay of Biscay. It was backbreaking even for a man like him and he got away from the river as soon as he could.

Florentino could pass as a shadow through the city and go up occasionally to his ancestral home, the Caserio Altzueta in Hernani, in the hills above the Bay of Biscay. But the points of reference describe another part of the known world, as if a sea voyage, rather than a hike and a trolley ride, should be needed to span the gap. The language patterns are even different—there are dozens of regional variations in word usage and accent; matching speech with village is a job worthy of a linguist. It means there are no strangers here, only recognizable clan members versus outsiders—those who do not speak Basque. And what outsiders hear is really a mélange of fourteen dialects. So anyone trying to interpret the language of these mountains is outmatched. The regionalisms mirror the sense of distance.

The Basques have lived for thousands of years in the hills, valleys and seacoast coves in the area of the western Pyrenees Mountains. The earliest Basque tribes lived there thousands of years ago, hunters and gatherers whose ancestors mingled with other early Europeans. Basques have been shepherds and hunters and seafarers beyond recorded history.

They were among the earliest mariners of Europe and are said to have traveled to North America with their fishing fleets at least 400 years before Columbus sailed from southern Spain for Ferdinand and Isabella. They maintained their independence throughout a series of invasions of the Iberian Peninsula. Two thousand years ago, the Romans made deals with them for safe passage en route to France rather than fighting for control of their rugged land; the Moors never conquered the northern climes of the Basque country during their 800-year occupation of Spain.

Florentino and his people were late converts to Catholicism; the Basques maintained a great tradition of finding divinity among the elements. Mari, for example, is a goddess who lives deep in a cave, protected by the Beigorri, a wild-eyed beast that roams the mountains.

Renowned both as expert seamen and mountain climbers—reflecting the diversity of their homeland—they adapted their farming and animal husbandry skills to the special terrain of the Pyrenees.

Basques were comfortable on both sides of the Spanish-French border—they had lived in the region before the countries existed. The frontiers created in the Middle Ages never divided the long-settled Basques from one another. Some held French citizenship and others lived in Spain. All considered themselves Basque nationals foremost. From Bayonne to Navarra, they spoke their unique language, Euskera, which is as impenetrable to outsiders as the Pyrenees themselves. The language is not of the Indo-European group and has unknown origins, though it borrows elements from Latin and Spanish when convenient.

Basque nationalists fought fiercely against Francisco Franco’s Fascist conquest of Spain from 1936 to 1939 and were singled out for harsh reprisals. Thousands were killed or jailed; they were under siege from all directions by his army and his secret police. Franco had taken on the titles of Generalísimo (the general above generals) and Caudillo (the leader). But the Basques knew him as a harsh and repressive dictator who banned their language and suppressed their customs.

Basque independence played a key role in the development of the Comet Line. Dédée realized the final few miles of the escape could not follow highways or railroads. They would need trustworthy, knowledgeable mountaineers who knew how to cross between France and Spain. Florentino was the unanimous choice. He had fled to France during the Spanish civil war. He appeared to be a rough sort with little in common with his fellow members of the resistance organization. He was twice their age and could hardly speak French or Spanish. Even in his own language, Euskera, conversation was short and to the point. But he shared with Dédée a hatred of fascism and occupation. Florentino was proud to help free the Allied pilots.

After leaving the sand-digging work he became a smuggler, and in the Basque country this had no bad connotations—anyone who lived on the border dealt in contraband or received it as a matter of survival. In the period of hunger after the Spanish civil war, he could deliver anything: coffee, tobacco, beans, beef, lace underwear, even a plump sheep or calf. Florentino could walk all night, propelled by his love of the mountains, fortified with jugs of cognac stashed along the way. His great advantage was his intimate knowledge of the mountains: he knew every possible fork of the trail. As much as he drank, he never faltered, even as his charges slipped and fell back behind him.

He’d always remained more than a step ahead of his pursuers on both sides of the border. He was already legendary for his prowess in the Basque country, and such a reputation among a people known for such traits was no small matter.

He also brought along a reputation among the airmen he’d led across the river. If an exhausted airman collapsed in the rushing river while crossing over to Spain, Florentino would carry the man across, his legs braving a current that would sweep others off their feet.

Herbert J. Spiller of the Royal Air Force was one of the airmen whom Florentino helped cross the Pyrenees to escape the Nazis. His long craggy face, weather-beaten and walnut-colored, had a kind of rugged nobility and was topped with a flat black beret, Spiller wrote, remembering his encounter with Florentino. The more we came to know him we marveled at his strength, his ability to sense danger and his instinctive feel for the mountains which enabled him to cover ground in the night-time at a tremendous pace avoiding obstacles and finding safe places to rest. We had cause to be thankful for his kindness and patience as he shepherded us into safety.

Back in England, there were more and more accounts of escapes across the mountains. When Spiller and other airmen got home, they testified to the brave and selfless people who rescued them from the Nazis. Their reports brought hope and relief to the growing number of airmen preparing to fly into enemy territory. If and when they got shot down, the crews knew there was a growing chance that they might get back home. Florentino’s strength and Dédée’s beauty and prowess were becoming mythic among the airmen stationed at the dozens of fields dotting the English countryside.

Once Florentino delivered his airmen to safety, he never tarried long in Spain. He was a man on the run,